The compass for the map

We were created to create. In Genesis, after forming the universe and everything in it, God said, “Let us make mankind in our image” and so composed our ancestors. When they stumbled forth from the fresh dust of the Earth, bearing that sacred and holy image, the Creator told them to carry it on through the lineage of humanity and history. In other words: The creation was designed to create. To create! That everything made by our hearts, minds, and hands— everything that flowed out of the movements of their creative spirits would bear the magnetic pull of their Maker’s image as a compass needle ever-fixed on its true destination.

But things changed. Something happened soon after the dawn of our history when God set us next to him before the orchestra and invited us to compose celestial symphonies with him. We became dissatisfied. Rather than being content with creativity, we were hungry for power. We sought to compete with the Maker; to erase his image from us and our creations and replace it with our own- to wrench the conducting baton from his hand and wield it for ourselves. And the Creator, preserving justice and our individuality, allowed us to break his heart with these red-eyed, froth-mouthed graspings, knowing they were the rabid convulsions of a free-will that, though intended to fuel our creative outpourings in the midst of his present companionship and friendship, now choked on the poison of a pride that turned us away into the darkness.

We were lost. The compass deep within our souls spun wildly to find its source again and we scorned that it would not fix upon ourselves or upon our proud works.

So we tried to destroy it.

To its Heavenward lens, we heaved the boulders of this earth that our toils upon it had wrought and thus taught each other to keep our heads out of those clouds. To the finely tuned gears of its orientation, we aimed our spears, swords, and cannons to lacerate its intricate ties to our hearts while we waged war for dominance and enslaved one another. To its diligent needle, every movement to find its Maker casting tangible ripples through the core of men and women, young and old alike, we we heaped the smothering weight and noise of our machines until we could no longer feel the quivering of a soul that longs for its home. These efforts achieved their aim, yielding one of the greatest and far-reaching tragedies our species has ever committed. We succeeded so well in burying this part of ourselves that we forgot it was ever there.

And here we are today: Occupying that same universe, commissioned by the same charter for creation as our predecessors. But something is missing. In one sense, we have carried out our task to “go forth and multiply” yet what we have multiplied is our shadows. Man’s mind and devices rule the earth, scorching the skies and all life beneath them with the smog of our industries, enslaving those whose very hands built them. Divorced from the Creator and his apprenticeship, the heart and soul remain as forgotten relics of a once-thriving civilization, now abandoned to its crumbling ruins.

But then came one who knew. One who remembered what lay buried beneath the ashes of our history. One who knew the sacred intimacy with which those organs were fashioned and affixed to our design when we were yet unframed in the womb of the earth. This was he who knew no lust for power, for all was his since the beginning. This was he who knew the beginning and end of all things for he himself was both.

He came dressed in the simple things of the world as we understood it; an ocean confining itself to a single raindrop. He came with authority; his hands overturned tables of corruption and his words toppled rulers. He came with peace; singing children danced in his footsteps, his whispers soothed the grieving mother. His presence caused a forgotten stirring; subterranean rumblings within the human essence, things once buried coming to the surface. It was both beautiful and painful. We saw it when he turned water to wine, healed the lame, and raised the dead to life. We heard it when he told us stories, when he recited the words of God as though they were his own, and when he passed crowds of the wealthy and influential to talk with the sick and the poor. We felt it when he was close. We felt it when he was close.

And yet we hated him. We hated him and those movements he caused within us. They rattled our machines and our methods. They disrupted our logic and our predictability. We wanted to murder him for it and we did. We tied those same hands that held the child and broke the bread and spilled the wine and we put holes in them to kill the havoc that they wrought and cease this divine and fleshly cardiac arrest and silence its escalating cacophony of millions and millions of machines falling apart and chains shattering and human cages being torn to open!

When it was over, blood was on our hands. It covered our heads and stained our clothes. It soaked our clothes and seeped into our skin. It pass through our bones and marrow. It ran rivers through us, into deep, unknown parts of our anatomy and washed, washed, washed away the piles of things we buried within us. It swept away filth, grime, toil, philosophies, pride, and all else that we did not know we were hiding behind.

What had we done? What had he done? There was nothing left to do but to marvel at the mass undoing that was all of humanity. The trailing debris behind us drawing the map of our lineage on the plane of history in all of our fallen glory. And when the last line that marked our trajectory ended, it found only the emaciated remnants of our soul, bare and uncovered, fixed unswervingly like a compass needle at the hill where we had laid the victim, the sacrifice, and the redeemer of our sin.

But he was no longer there. He had gone from our sight, but it was then that we saw. He had not gone from life. How could he? We knew all along, hadn’t we? Those stirrings deep within and the fire in our chests. Mankind had known those tremors since its beginnings but had long forgotten. It was him. This thing in our souls that pivoted toward some hitherto unknown destination- it was him. He was life itself. Creation flowed from those hands- those hands we had pierced and who now turned the dial of our compass toward a destination we could not see but could feel with the whole of our being; as though every atom being drawn toward to the music of the very celestial symphony that set the pace for their twirling ballet.

We still get bound by our devices. We still fall into the mires of our past, burying the ancient yearnings within. But the Creator’s footsteps still linger, beckoning us onward, forward, and upward. But like those singing children that followed him when he walked the earth, we sometimes stumble into one of his footprints and feel the jump of the dancing needle within and the fire that fills the chest of one who has caught the trail.

I was created to create. After years of piecing together the map of my past, I discovered this truth about my design. Reflection, crafted words, poetry, and art are the tools with which I peel back the layers of the temporal to catch a glimpse of the wonderful, the deep, the mysterious, vast subterranean ocean of the spiritual that flows just beneath the surface.

I am a creative creation. You are a creative creation.

Your craft, your gift, is your Creator’s compass. Spin the dial to align your bearings with the homeward needle when it comes alive. Envision! Imagine! Dream! Create! This is the image in which we were made. Turn the water of this world into wine! Raise life where it has died! Be the light unto its darkness! Let us set our bearings upon the path that those pierced hands have lain and those pierced feet have trod, to bring ourselves nearer to him. Let us sing to the world of the home where we are headed and let them hear of it that they may know, that they may follow. For we are going home. We can feel it when he is close.

We feel it when he is close.